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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSubmittal-Iris Escarra-Magazine ArticlerWells FargoWorks, Lfor Small Business Submitted into the public record for items) P q•. • l on 1. I? • 15 . City Clerk Map your future today Build your business with smart financing At Wells Fargo you'll find a variety of business credit options to help you reach your short- and long-term goals, or simply to supplement cash flow. A local banker is here to help guide you to the appropriate financing for your business, including: • Credit cards • Lines of credit • Loans • Real estate financing • Vehicle and equipment loans You can borrow with confidence knowing you're working with a bank that's loaned more money to small businesses than any other bank for more than a decade.* Stop by to speak with a local banker today, or visit wellsfargo.com/appointments to make an appointment. WELLS FARGO America's #1 small business lender* Learn more about small business credit at wellsfargoworks.com Ct•2002-2013 Community Reinvestment Act government data All financing subject to credit approval. © 2014 Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. Member FDIC. NMLSR ID 399801 Ai1 rights reserved. (1225403_13757) Together we'll go far Executive Fitness 56 Jobs Report. Biggest Law Cases`217i0Etcf,151 n THE MAGAZINE OF FLORIDA BUSINESS - 54.95 FI oridaTrend.coM lu��iltdfuu�+IltttlPn^hllittd+4uthu1H11luifli1P11 Submitted into the public record for item(s)ja1 on 2.12 • I S . City Clerk January 2015 Trend Submitted into the public record for item(s) p?,.\ on 2• 17.1 S . City Clerk FLORIDIAN OFTHEY IAMI The Most Exciting City in the World' y Mike Vogel So many projects to pick from, ut let's start by singling out Miami Worldcenter. A decade ago, developer Art Falcone, looking for a legacy for his areer, and 26-year-old Nitin Motwani as- embled 47 parcels over nearly 30 acres n a blighted area just north of the core of iowntown, an area whose prospects were Curt by the proximity of a large homeless shelter and congestion from 16,000 trucks and cars a day passing through from the Tort to the interstate. "Our feeling was that Miami was going o be a true global city," Motwani says. The ransformative project never made it out f the ground before the real estate bust and recession. Fast forward to 2014. Miami's city com- missioners unanimously approved the plans for a 15-million-sq: ft project with m 1,800-room hotel conference center, sidential towers and more than 800,000 40 JANUARY2015 FLORIOATRENO.COM square feet of retail space anchored by Macy's and Bloomingdale's. The fast phase alone will represent a $2-billion invest- ment When the first condo tower, a 60-sto- ry, 470-unit building, was announced in November, its brokerage firm already was in Brazil pitching units to potential buyers in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Our Floridian of the Year, the city of Mi- ami, captured the trends — and then some — that drove Florida in 2014. Tourism in- creased, with records set on all fronts. Real estate continued a strong recovery, with 11 straight quarters of price appreciation. Unemployment fell and construction em- ployment increased. The county school district won national recognition for its improvement. The vibrant downtown -liv- ing scene rose to new heights, evidenced by chic nighttime crowds dining in Brick - ell, runners sweating along the bayfront, crowds in the aisles at the downtown Pub - The city of Miami was at the forefront of every trend in 2014. tar iarrIall,M1111•15 Submitted into the public record for item(sl Pi • on 2• I'Z• IS . City Clerk FLORIDIAN OF THE YEAR lix supermarkets and workers installing the sign for the new Whole Foods. Evinc- ing a contrasting trend, wealth disparity became more apparent. By one measure of income inequality, Miami has the third - highest disparity among U.S. cities after Atlanta and New Orleans. Bloomberg News reports that income inequality in Miami mirrors Mexico City's level. It also reports the city is the toughest for low - wage workers to rise. Submitted into the public record for itemsi on 21 •City Clerk E CROMER COP Nitin Motwani (above) and partner Art Falcone assembled 47 parcels in a blighted area just north of the core of downtown a decade ago. "Our feeling was that Miami was going to be a true global city," Motwani says. At left is a rendering of the Mall at Miami Worldcenter. Public and non-profit sector spend- ing played a role in Miami's resurgence. The $1-billion tunnel under Biscayne Bay, which connected the port to the interstate and removed the truck traffic from the Worldcenter environs, opened in August, with the ceremonial first caravan led by the local Harley -riding Catholic arch- bishop. A $200-million deep dredge of the port channel continued to give the region a shot at post -Panama Canal expansion business. On Biscayne Bay, the skeleton of the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science rose in 2014 to buttress the new Museum Park, anchored by the Perez Art Museum Miami that opened in 2013. But nothing bespeaks Miami like the return of the recession -endangered state bird, the construction crane. A mile south of the Worldcenter site, across the Miami River in Brickell, Hong Kong -based Swire Properties shot forward with its own transformative project, the $1-billion, 5 million-sq.-ft. Brickell City Centre. Launched amid the instability of the recession, it's now a hive of construction activity as its 500,000 square feet of retail space, with lead anchor Saks Fifth Avenue, rises along with a hotel, two class A office buildings and two 43-story condo towers totaling 780 units. Employment on the project will max out at 2,500 hired by 150 subcontractors, says Swire's Christopher Gandolfo, vice president of development As of June, thanks to Brickell City Cen- tre, Miami accounted far 73% of the retail development under construction in Flor- ida, according to real estate firm CBRE. Miami's downtown accounted for 88% of downtown office development in Florida Transformative project No. 3: Florida East Coast Industries' All Aboard Florida, the most significant passenger rail project in the nation, began site work downtown Art Basel, held annually in Miami Beach, is an international draw. Submitted into the public record for item(s) I on 2.12. i . City Clerk Catholic Archbishop Thomas Wenski led a caravan at the ceremonial opening of the tunnel under Biscayne Bay in August. for its 3-million-sq.-ft. commercial, re- tail and residential station complex, the southern terminus of its Miami -to -Orlan- do private rail route. In 2014, MyBrickeli became the first condo tower started and completed in Miami's downtown since the bust. Not surprisingly, it was developed by Miami's luxury condo uber-developer Jorge Perez and his Related Group, who in the last boom changed forever Miami's skyline with a bevy of projects. Perez now has another 13 condo Christopher Gandolfo tower projects in some stage of develop- ment downtown and a total of 22 in south Florida, plus more globally. Perez, though, is just one player. Early in the year, Miami -Dade County stood as the largest and fastest -growing housing con- struction market in the Southeast More than 9,000 units are under construction or in the construction/reservation phase, with another 15,000 units planned, says Integra Realty Resources -Miami. In all of south Florida, developers want another 290 towers totaling 40,000 units, according to Cranespotters.com. The driver is international money. In Miami, drinking the Kool-Aid of can't - miss development always came with a toast to the city as the capital of Latin America. Now, the toast is broaden. Miami as a global city. There's evidence beyond the number of interna- tional stars with a home here or the annual visitors to the Art Basel modern art show in Miami Beach or the throng of multi -national companies, international banks, consulates and trade offices. Lon- don real estate consultant Knight Frank's annual "Wealth Report" 42 JANUARY 2015 FLORIDATREND.COM photos. Daniel Portnoy top; Miami Worldcenter bottom photos: Me Rodriguez-Soto/The Archdiocese of Mnitap; Bill Wisser bottom FLORIDATREND.COM JANUARY 2015 43 FLORIDIAN OF THE YEAR: MIAMI in 2014 ranked Miami seventh among the most desired cities by the world's super rich, outranked in the hemisphere only by New York and ahead globally of Paris and Dubai. Such notice is a delight to Louis Bird- man, one of the developers of One Thou- sand Museum, a 62-story downtown tow- er with only 83 units, designed by famed architect Zaha Hadid. The cheapest unit starts at $5.5 million; the most expensive is $49 million. At more than $1,700 per square foot, it's at the top of the market for downtown. Buyers represent 20 countries. Everywhere has its cycles, "but there are cities that bounce back quicker and when they do, they move up a notch," Birdman says. Miami's economy enjoys a more diverse set of drivers than the rest of Florida, says University of Central Florida economist Sean Snaith. Global money, most of it from Latin American, allowed Miami real estate to pull out of the crash faster than the rest of Florida, faster than almost any U.S. market Integra Realty Resources -Miami reports 90% of the demand for condos comes from abroad. Miami is in the "envi- Submitted into the public record for items) a .1 on 2. 12. 15 . City Clerk ous" position of being a real estate export economy, says Integra's An- thony Graziano, senior managing di- rector It's a place where buyers park their money in real estate and where demand isn't tied to the fundamen- tals of local employment or wage growth. He reports that fewer than U% of all downtown condo units have homestead exemptions. Buyer Arturo Siso, a Key Biscayne resi- dent who came to Miami from Venezuela and has invested in a range of real estate types here, says, "When you compare (Mi- anu) to the other major cities, it's cheaper." Indeed, on a per -square -foot basis, new downtown Miami condos remain a deal Miami's glut of 10,000 unsold condos — expected to last a decade — has been absorbed in less than two years. Today, more than 23,000 condo units are under construction or proposed. Louis Birdman not only compared to New York but also to Miami Beach and Sunny Isles Beach just across the bay. Siso intends to rent out a unit he has contracted for at 1010 Brickell, a 387-unit tower pro- posed for Brickell. Rented units — a hefty share of the 22,000 built in the last cycle — have been a boon to downtown living Miami's daytime population num- bers 222,000. Its residential population has doubled to 81,000 since 2000 and is pro- jected to hit 92,500 by 2019, according to a Miami Downtown Development Authori- ty study. In 2000, Greater downtown com- prised 11% of the city's population; now it's nearly a fifth in a city that already was the most densely populated city in Florida. Downtown is young — the largest co- hort is 25 to 29 — thanks to millennials not ready to move to the suburbs to raise families. It's more prosperous than the city and county, with $65,311 in median household income. Affordability is an issue. New condo unit prices already are out of the question for the vast majority of locals. The city has the highest median home value among Flor- ida's major cities but is poorest in median individual and household income; the met- ro's household income is far below New York, Los Angeles and the other major U.S. cities it aspires to be counted among Events to watch out for include changes abroad that could disrupt the flow of in- ternational money and the impact of ris- ing rental costs and construction costs, says Domonic Purviance, senior financial policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Adam Mopsick, CEO of Amicon Con- struction in Miami, says pay for workers at the low end of the skills spectrum al - ready is up $2 to $3 per hour while pay for skilled trades is up 30%. Subcontractors are so busy that it's become hard to get price quotes, he says. At the peak of the last cycle, in 2007, construction employment in Miami reached 55,800. It fell to 30,900 in 2011 and, as of September, recovered to 38,500. "It still has a long way to go," Purviance says. Fears of overbuilding walk in lockstep with a boom. Signs of froth include the regular headlines about enormous prices paid for sites and the sheer number of proposed projects. Graziano, in his study, wrote that if a bubble is defined as a dis- connect between price and fundamental demand, "Greater Downtown Miami is always in a bubble because 90% of the de- mand is external, and hence is not tied to economic fundamentals." Miami is in mid -cycle, be says. The real- ity of what will get built is different from what's proposed. It's been three years, for example, since Malaysia -based Genting bought the Miami Herald headquarters and nearby land fora resort it said it would build even if the state didn't allow it to open a full-fledged casino. So far, all that's come of it is the de- molition of the Herald building. The last boom -bust cycle saw the proposal of Miapolis, billed as the tallest building in the world. It stayed a dream. Integra Realty Resources -Mi- ami counts 5,277 condo units ac- tually under construction down- town, just a fifth of what was created in the last cycle, and another 3,763 taking res- ervations or signing contracts with buyers. No year through 2017 will see more than 2,528 units delivered to the market, com- pared to 10,111 in 2008, it projects. It's a Jorge Perez Submitted into the public record for item(s) Q? . 1 on 2.17.15" . City Clerk In 2000, only about 11 % of the city of Miami's population lived downtown. Today, nearly 20% of the population lives downtown, in a city that already was the most densely populated in Florida. Miami now ranks seventh in the world as the most desired city by the world's super rich — ahead of Paris and Dubai. sustainable pace, Graziano says. Back at Miami Worldcenter, Mot- wani looks north to his site, now largely parking lots, from a 35th- floor conference room in the Miami Tower that was built in another Mi- ami cycle, the savings and loan era of the 1980s. The homeless shelter moved. Downtown, as he and Fal- cone hoped, has spread north with the development of Edgewater, Wynwood and the Design District so that their proj- ect no longer is on the edge of downtown. Museum Park, the American Airlines Arena, Arsht Center and the All Aboard Florida station, which is adjacent to the Worldcenter site, serve as unparalleled amenities. The road and rail network po- sitions his site for ease of access to Miami Beach, the port, airport and interstate. Critical mass has arrived for downtown Miami. He expects the joint venture of de- velopment companies Forbes and Taub- man to break ground on Worldcenter's mall this year. "We're sitting in the center of the most exciting city in the world right now," Mot- wani says. "A city within a city, within a very dynamic city We were designing it for the Miami of the future. We truly believed Miami as a community would pull it off and it did." m 44 JANUARY2015 FLORIDATREND.COM bottom photo: SLS LUX Brickel photos: Robin Hill top; Bill Wieser middle FLORIOATRENO.COM JANUARY 2015 45